It didn’t take long for Massachusetts officials to spring into action after the federal subsidies for health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) expired at the end of 2025.

On Jan. 8, Massachusetts announced $250 million in additional funding on top of $350 million that had been allocated from the Commonwealth Care Trust Fund to offset high monthly premiums for those residents who get health insurance through the state’s ConnectorCare program. That program is for residents who make below 400% of the federal poverty level — in 2025, that was $62,600 for an individual and $128,600 for a family of four.

“With these subsidies, that’s a great help” said Sonia Amado, director of health access and wellness services at the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC). “Now they can possibly afford the health insurance that they thought they had lost.”

Rising health care costs have been a national focus in recent months and became a point of contention during the congressional budgeting process that resulted in the month-and-a-half-long government shutdown in October and November. Federal subsidies included in the ACA — tax credits that help individuals offset some of the cost of their monthly health insurance premiums — were enhanced in 2021 to provide added relief during the COVID-19 pandemic-era and extended in 2025.

Last fall, Democratic lawmakers in Congress pushed to renew the subsidies, but the Republican majority resisted.

The expiration of the subsidies not only mean an increase in health care costs but also fewer people opting to be insured. By the start of January, about 1.5 million fewer people nationwide had signed up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act, according to data from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Massachusetts is one of a few states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and New Mexico, to come up with its own plans to offer reprieve for its residents.

The state is going beyond announcing additional funding for subsidies, however. Following the Jan. 8 funding announcement, BPHC hosted an event on Jan. 21 to help Bostonians who hadn’t signed up for health insurance during the final days of the open enrollment period that began in November.

In a small room in the basement of Boston City Hall, health care navigators with the Mayor’s Health Line program helped more than a dozen residents enroll in an insurance plan. Several others attended the event to get more information about signing up. Those late-January sign-ups add

to the 288 people who signed up for insurance through the city’s services in November and December, a 38% increase from the same period the year before, a BPHC spokesperson said.

In a Jan. 14 announcement, the Healey-Driscoll administration said it was creating a Health Care Affordability Working Group to propose new ways to reduce costs statewide.

“This is a moment of urgency, and today we are bringing together leaders from across health care, business and labor to find every possible step we can take to lower costs and improve health care in Massachusetts,” Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement. In her statement she said the effort was the “most comprehensive action in the country.”

Michael Curry, executive director of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, which supports the state’s 50 community health centers, said the new entity is intended to bring the state closer to longstanding promises about access and equity that he said the state has yet to measure up to.

“We have some of the leading hospitals and health centers in the nation here in the commonwealth,” said Curry, who is part of the working group. “Yet we are still struggling to make sure that health care is affordable, that it is accessible, that it is equitable and that it rises to the level of quality that we needed it to be.”

The state has already identified some priorities to address, including concerns about prior authorization — where a medical provider has to get approval from a health plan before providing a service or treatment.

In the same Jan. 14 announcement, the governor announced that the state’s Division of Insurance is planning to issue updated regulations to streamline prior authorization practices for some routine services, calling these practices “waste and unnecessary barriers.” For example, patients with diabetes will no longer need this approval to access services and drugs for treatment. Another change is that insurers will only have 24 hours to respond to requests that concern patients with multiple sclerosis who need treatment to prevent nerve damage.

Curry said the new regulations for prior authorization will help patients navigate a system that can be overly bureaucratic and burdensome.

Like prior authorization, other areas that also drive up cost of care — administrative waste, pricing practices and system inefficiencies — will be the focus of the working group, according to the governor’s office. These are areas Curry is looking forward to tackling.

“What other aspects of our health care system could use some administrative simplicity to drive greater efficiency, remove barriers to care and to access? I think [this] is an exciting conversation and long overdue,” he said.

As he considers his role on the working group, Curry said he also is thinking about primary care availability and broader challenges of access and equity, especially since the state’s primary care system is already under strain.

Still, the success of the health care affordability task force will be marked by the implementation and effect of any recommendations it makes, Curry said.

“Working groups, task forces, commissions, can be a waste of time,” he said. “But I’m hopeful and optimistic that this task force, launched by the governor [and] made up of very intelligent and capable folks, can push some reforms to the fore that the state can take seriously.”

The open enrollment period for coverage through ConnectorCare closed on Jan. 23, but BPHC encourages Massachusetts residents who don’t have coverage to reach out to navigators through the Mayor’s Health Line at 617-534-5050 or other local services to find ways to still qualify for a health insurance plan.